• Celebration of Scholars 2020

  • Atmospheric Gas Loss in Hot Jupiters Under Variable Stellar Irradiation
  • Automated Repair of Buffer Overflow
  • Biogeochemical Cycling of Nutrient Elements in Stormwater Retention Ponds
  • Bioinformatic Investigation of Nuclear Transport
  • Buried Alive: Ecology of the Infaunal Sponge Oceanapia
  • Caloric Load Preferentially Influences Epithelial Differentiation in the Murine Uterus to Drive Endometrial Hyperplasia
  • A Compilation of Systems That Are Both Novae and Dwarf Novae
  • Computer Modeling of Nucleophilic Substitution and Beta Elimination Reactions
  • Cubed Sphere: Simulating Tilted Black Hole Accretion Disk and Their Effects on Astrophysical Jets
  • Data Visualization: From Covid-19 to Back on the Bricks
  • Designing a Mobile Flood Warning Application for the Charleston, SC Region
  • Developing a Mobile Application for Flood Warning in the Charleston, SC Region
  • Discovering Authorship of Flawed Code Snippets
  • Dynamic Network Activation of Hypothalamic Neurons in REM Sleep
  • Effect of Storage Temperature and Time on Urine Electrolyte Assessment
  • Effects of Changeover-Requirement Location on Between-Sequence Variation in Pigeons
  • The Effects of Estradiol Treatment on Synaptic Reorganization and Plasticity Around Motoneurons After Traumatic Peripheral Nerve Injury in Mice.
  • Effects of Steroid Hormones on Voluntary Physical Activity Levels
  • Encountering Overdose: An Analysis of College Students' Overdose Experiences
  • Evolution of Pelvis Musculoskeletal Anatomy in Lizards
  • Examining the Back To Bricks Reopening Plan on Various Demographics Within Charleston
  • Expanding LGBTQ+ Responsiveness at CofC Student Health Services
  • Expression-building in Squid 3
  • Growing Up Salty: The Effects of Transient Salinity on Tadpole Growth, Behavior, and Development
  • HailPoint, Broadcasting, and Social Media
  • A Hubble Space Telescope Direct Imaging Investigation of Extrasolar Planets
  • Inter-comparison of Rainfall Measurements from 1- and 2-Dimensional Video Disdrometers
  • Investigating Nanocolloids Using Shadowgraphy
  • Investigating the Effect of Episodic Stellar Activity on Planetary Evolution
  • Investigating Truncated Disk Simulations for Signs of Quasi Periodic Oscillations
  • Lower Extremity Jump-Landing Biomechanics After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction with Quadriceps Tendon Versus Patellar Tendon Autografts
  • Mapping Water in the Outer Asteroid Belt - Origins of Life
  • Mars Map Maker: User Empowerment in Meta Data and Data Submission
  • MARS: Middleware for Assisting the Registration of Samples
  • Patterns Observed on Mussel Bed Formation
  • Preliminary Analysis of Bulk Rain Variables Acquired from Laser Precipitation Monitors Mounted at Different Heights on a Vertical Tower
  • Progress Toward Anti-microbial Polymers: Adventures in Small Molecule Synthesis and Polymer Synthesis
  • Properly Resolving the Effective Measurement Area in a High-Fidelity Rain Measurement Device
  • A Religious History of the College of Charleston
  • Simulations of Light Transmission Through a Virtual Cloud
  • Strongly Magnetized Disks & Thermal Stability
  • Subdividing Rain Drop Arrivals into Steady Intervals
  • Synthesis and Spectral Characterization of 6-membered Silanes
  • Teaching Data Science Skills with a Focus on Visualization
  • Thermochemistry of Novel Polymers
  • A Tomographic Scan of the Accretion Disk Around a Supermassive Black Hole
  • Topsoil: An Open-Source Visualization Engine for Geochronological Data
  • Tropical Cyclone Climatology for Columbia and Greenville SC
  • Two-scale Factor Universality of O2: Experiments Under Density Gradients
  • Uncertainty of Heterogeneous Freezing Rate of Water on Muscovite Mica
  • The Use and Abuse of Philosophy in History: James Warley Miles and the Dangers of Racist Dehistoricization
  • Using Sentinel-2 MSI Data to Monitor the Physical Environment of Coral Reefs in the U.S. Virgin Islands
  • Virtual Assistant for Pair Programming (VAPP)
  • Women with HIV's Perception of Coercion During Contraceptive and Infant Feeding Counseling

College Home / Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities / A Glance at Research / Celebration of Scholars 2020 / Investigating the Effect of Episodic Stellar Activity on Planetary Evolution

Student: Logan Oxener

Major: Astronomy

Mentors: Dr. Joseph Carson

Department: Physics and Astronomy

Investigating the Effect of Episodic Stellar Activity on Planetary Evolution

The relationship between short burst stellar activity, such as solar flares or magnetic storms, and the development of planets has yet to be fully explored. Such short-term stellar activity, which has been previously shown to cause increases in star brightness by factors of a 100 or more (Kowalski et al. 2009), can have major impacts on an orbiting planet's atmosphere, including properties that are important for planet habitability. To help investigate the significance of this phenomenon, we collected new telescope data, via remote observations on 1-meter telescopes in South Africa and Australia, and also downloaded publicly available archival data, to monitor changes in visual brightness of three young, nearby stars. The targets were all K and M type stars, which are the most prevalent type of stars in the universe. The properties of K and M type stars may therefore have wide implications for the likelihood of life in the universe. To analyze the data, we used our own developed software to measure brightness changes and to produce plots of photometry versus time. The results of our analysis will be provided as inputs to ongoing computer simulations (see presentation by A. Nida), which predict how changes in star brightness impact the atmospheres of hypothetical orbiting planets.